Bosnia Raid Yields al-Qaida Donor List

WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities recovered a list of 20 financiers they suspect funneled money to Osama bin Laden and others extremist Muslim causes among a cache of documents that provide insight into the financing of terrorism, an unsealed court record shows.

The seized documents are a "treasure trove" and among other things indicate al-Qaida military leaders were at times paid salaries from Muslim charity proceeds and purchased weapons with money from charity leaders, prosecutors said in the once-secret court filing.

Other evidence seized in March 2002 from the Bosnian offices of the Benevolence International Foundation, an Illinois-based Muslim charity, includes handwritten correspondence to and from bin Laden and documents detailing the origins, growth and expansion of his al-Qaida network in the 1980s and 1990s, the filing said.

Though the original documents remain secret, the prosecutor described their contents and English translations for the first time in the filing unsealed this month in the case of the head of the Muslim foundation who reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Chicago.

Enaam Arnaout pleaded guilty last week to illegally buying boots and uniforms for fighting forces in Bosnia and Chechnya under a deal in which prosecutors, in exchange for his cooperation, dropped charges that he aided bin Laden.

In a pretrial document known as a "proffer," prosecutors said handwritten documents scanned into computer formats in the Bosnia office included a file titled "Osama's history" that contained "a handwritten draft list of people referred to within al-Qaida as the 'Golden Chain,' wealthy donors to mujahedeen efforts."

"The list contained 20 names, and after each name a parenthetical indicating the person who received the money from the specified donor," the proffer said.

The list suggested at least seven of the donors gave directly to bin Laden, and six of the others were listed as giving to the founder of a Muslim charity, the court document said.

U.S. officials declined to identify any of the 20 donors, but said the list is one of several pieces of evidence the government has obtained since the war on terror began after Sept. 11 that identifies spigots of money that have financed bin Laden and Middle Eastern and Asian terrorists over the past two decades.

U.S. officials estimate they have frozen roughly $124.5 million in financial assets belonging to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, since the Sept. 11 attacks.

One letter found in the files instructed a charity leader to pay a monthly salary of 4,500 Saudi riyals each - about $1,200 - to two of al-Qaida's top military leaders. The letter establishes "that military commanders were salaried by the support organizations," the prosecutors said in the proffer.

Other documents discuss the purchases of weapons such as missiles, dynamite, fuses, rocket-propelled grenades and bayonets, the proffer stated.

The documents found in the charity's Bosnian office also chronicle the evolution of bin Laden's movement from support of the once U.S.-based muhajedeen warriors fighting Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to a global terror network that posed threats to the United States and rest of the Western world.

In one letter, an unidentified author writes to bin Laden asking for help for followers in the African country of Eritrea. The letter identifies as its top goal "facilitating the travel of the youth to the field of Jihad so they can benefit from the training possibilities, by providing them with tickets and entry visas," according to the government translation.

Another letter from bin Laden "explains the time has come for an attack on the Russians," the court documents said. Other correspondence describe money transfers and weapons purchases showing that al-Qaida often facilitates such transactions with a simple letter from bin Laden or a top lieutenant asking the recipient to provide money to the bearer of the letter.

For instance, one letter instructed the recipient to send 400,000 rupees of Pakistani money - about $7,200 - "to the owner of the weapon for delivery in Parachinar ... for security reasons," the proffer said.

Another used an alias to refer to bin Laden and his request that a charity leader "give 500,000 rupees to the man bearing the letter," the proffer said. That's about $9,000.

While most of the documents were a decade or more older, they provided U.S. authorities with significant insight into al-Qaida and helped confirm many suspicions about its finances, structure and evolution, U.S. officials said. Some details in the documents "were not known to the public," the proffer said.

Handwritten notes detail the original formation of al-Qaida, including minutes of an Aug. 11, 1988, meeting bin Laden held to discuss "the establishment of a new military group." Those notes record bin Laden's own statements on the efforts to recruit members from Saudi Arabia for his network and to raise money.

The notes quote bin Laden as saying "we took very huge gains from the country's people in Saudi. We were able to give political power to the mujahedeen, gathering donations in very large amounts, restoring power," the court document states.

So KLA attacking and provoking Serb police units is not a crime?

So disenfranchising millions of Kosovar Albanians through extralegal machinations and usurping their Federal vote is not a crime?

Not in Milosevic's Yugoslavia - which is exactly why it disintegrated.

Milosevic had Rugova to work with, opted for continued repression, and wound up losing Kosovo when he played right into the KLA's hands by loosing his forces on K-Albanian civilians.

Milosevic was warned about his repression in Kosovo back in the first Bush administration but could and still can, apparently, count on support for failed policies conducted in the face of worldwide opprobium.

Which referendums in particular did you have in mind? The one in Bosnia which was open to all but boycotted by the Bosnian Serbs...

All??? You sure about that? Last I heard, the rest of Yugoslavia did not have a voice in the matter. The Bosnian referendum was not open to all of Yugoslavia, it was only held in Bosnia where Izetbegovic could be sure of the results. He did not, could not, meet the requirements as outlined in the Yugoslav constitution for a republic to secede, so he simply changed the rules. And that's a-ok with you. When the RS did to Bosnia what Bosnia did to Yugoslavia, then you moan and bitch. In the words of Dr. Evil, "get a friggin clue," will you?

I learn nothing from you except how to restrain my sarcasm.

In that case you certainly haven't learned very much. Although I must say you've learned to spin, dance and obfuscate rather well. Momma must be proud.

Have you been reading form the Tito text book on revisionist history Hoplite?

So disenfranchising millions of Kosovar Albanians through extralegal machinations and usurping their Federal vote is not a crime?

1/3 (prewar population) of these "disenfranchised" Alabanians were illegal aliens. Great, let's allow every illegal immigrant in the US a vote so the democrats can actually have chance in 04. Let's subsidize Southern California, Texas, Arizona and Florida and make it one big welfare State. C'mon Hoppy, your nonsensical tripe comes straight out of the Jamie Shea handbook of cliches.

Not in Milosevic's Yugoslavia - which is exactly why it disintegrated.

LOL!!!! Yugoslavia began desintigrating the moment Tito's carcass was buried. You mean to tell me that you think Tito's Yugoslavia was democratic and didn't usurp the Albanian vote(forget the fact that Serbs lived their too, right Hoplite? Serbs don't count I suppose!)? You would have made a great communist Hoplite! LOL!!!

Milosevic had Rugova to work with, opted for continued repression, and wound up losing Kosovo when he played right into the KLA's hands by loosing his forces on K-Albanian civilians.

Excellent, we have an admission by Hoplite! We already know what really transpired there, Wraith buried you on this issue a while ago, get over it. So, Albanian loyalists being murdered by the KLA really didn't amount to much eh? Thaci is on the run from the ICTY for links to war crimes and his henchmen are being reigned in and still somehow you manage to pull the Serb factor out of your arse.

Milosevic was warned about his repression in Kosovo back in the first Bush administration but could and still can, apparently, count on support for failed policies conducted in the face of worldwide opprobium.

Sounds like Bush Jr. is having a rather dubious time with world opinion at the moment, hypocricy moves in mysterious ways Hoppy!

You're always good for a few laughs Hoppy! :-D

2/3rds of 1.6 million is still 700,000 more than the non-Albanian population of Kosovo, and their oppression was the direct cause of Slovenia's decision to secede from Yugoslavia.

Given that the Slovenians haven't had to recover their murdered kin from Police training grounds in Belgrade, they made exactly the right decision.

Allow me to refresh your memory, Firewall - Tito said "the worse, the better" and mounted attacks upon German troops in Yugoslavia in WW2 as a means of utilizing the German's response to his advantage - had the Germans not been the arrogant mass murdering idiots they were, Tito would not have enjoyed any success with his strategy and Mihailovic would have been in a stronger position after the Germans decamped and Serbia would have been the de-facto strongest Balkan power post WW2 and not had to bother with Tito's experiment in Brotherhood and Unity.

You do not remember the past, and you have unknowingly relived it wearing the other side's shoes.

Well holy sheep sh*t Batman we have a genius here! Well then, go ask your dead "Uncle Brotherhood" why he screwed the Albanians back in 48 when he promised them an independent State. Yes, had Tito's strategy failed, Kosovo would not be in the mess it is in now and the Balkans would not be the basket case it is!!!! Good going Hoplite, you proved my point. Tito only allowed that social experiment known as Yugoslavia to continue from the original Wilsonian version for his own purposes, I'm glad you agree!

Kosovo, and their oppression was the direct cause of Slovenia's decision to secede from Yugoslavia.

So the rioting in 68 and the attacks on Serbs in the 80's were figments of the Serbian imagination right Hoplite? Milo made it State policy to keep the locals from obtaining tinfoil hats preventing them from remembering anything the Albanians did in Kosovo...pretty darned clever that Milo! Let's not mention the Albanian birthrate (another one of Tito's greatest feats), lots of future uneducated voters and human slaves for the EU to keep herding up from brothels around Europe. Sounds like a bright future to me.

2/3rds of 1.6 million is still 700,000 more than the non-Albanian population of Kosovo...

Are you telling me because of shear numbers that the Albanians had the right to cleanse the Serbs out of Kosovo for the past 20 years and while recieving a generous helping of government subsidies, free utilities, their own Albanian speaking Universities, government jobs that allowed them to spen hours on end in cafes while on the governmant payroll - they still complained about opression???!!!!! Yeah ok...

So when do we secede Southern California to Mexico? I heard Fox wants to be in the movies and wants to annex Hollywood.

Yugoslavia today is undemocratic and on the brink of civil war. We are out of line with developments in Europe. We need to join the European Community, but that’s impossible as long as the Serbian policy in Kosovo persists. Kosovo is the touchstone that will mark Yugoslavia’s readiness to be a modern, progressive, democratic state. Only if we cannot achieve democracy would Slovenia consider secession.

Milan Kucan, President of Slovenia.

Thus did Milosevic truss up the Kosovar Albanians, and sacrifice Yugoslavia on the altar of Serbian Nationalism.

And you're still praying at that altar, FireWall.

Pulling at more straws Hoplite? As already established in my previous post, you can thank Tito for creating the hornets nest in Kosovo while we can blame the Serbs for buying into the communist propoganda that Tito spoonfed them since the end of the war. Since both you and I seem to agree that Tito was the father of the fine mess in the Balkans, you should quit quoting irrelevent figures such as Racan, the Slovenians are more interested in tooting their own horn for sake of image to the EU than relying on the facts. Remember who shot first Hoplite, Slovenian paramilitaries attacked a JNA barracks full of unarmed soldiers, bravery at its finest. Slovenia is not interested in Kosovo's future, they're only worried about theirs, its the PC thing to do.

C'mon Hoplite, by your own admission had Draza not been screwed by Soviet moles feeding BS to Churchill, Kosovo would not be in its current pickle. Serbs would have been allowed back top their homes unlike Tito's resolution, history would have been certainly quite different now.

Kosovo enjoyed more autonomy than most States here in the US but still whined about not having enough government assistance, I guess the Albanian inteligencia(oxymoron) found it easier to whine than work. Well Hoplite, since Milo no longer has the reigns on Kosovo, I ask you, is Kosovo better off today? An Albanian Kosovo = a crime ridden Europe. If you feel the benevolent Kosovars are such a model of democracy, why don't you go there on vacation?

Reading the information you cite, I get the following:

"With 405 clauses it was the world's longest constitution, and, probably on account of its absurd length, was virtually untranslatable and largely non-sensical."

In light of its complexity and the complexity of the Former Yugoslavia in general, there is little agreement on the issue of under what circumstances that Constitution permits the secession of the republics. Bennett states that, while the first communist constitution, adopted in 1946, explicitly granted a right of self-determination (secession), the 1974 constitution implied that right, while one Serb source says that the right to secession was granted but was contingent upon the agreement of all of the republics. The lack of certainty on the issue is perhaps best demonstrated by the votes of the parliaments of Slovenia and Croatia in 1990 asserting their right to secede one year before they did so

Let me put it this way - you made a positive statement about the Yugoslav constitution and secession, but cannot support your statement with anything substantiative when called upon to do so, and instead cite something which points out that the Yugoslav Constitution was vague at best upon the subject of secession, and certainly offers no explicit denial of a right to secede in the manner taken by any of the republics which did so in the early '90s.

I see no reason to engage you in any further discussion until you either back up your statement or retract it - it is not for you to call upon me to do research which you should have done before composing your posts, Bob.

He did not, could not, meet the requirements as outlined in the Yugoslav constitution for a republic to secede,

Like I said, I'm gonna have fun with this - what requirements are you referring to?

The fact that you, and those like you, still cling to the view that Balkan tribal affiliations are more important than any commonly held view of laws or rights is the cause of the problem, FireWall.

All men are created equal and should be judged upon their actions, not upon their genealogy - either adopt that view or remain mired in your petty little intra ethnic squabbles while the rest of the world leaves you behind.

Lastly, our agreements as perceived by you are more a result of faulty reading comprehension skills than any actual congruence.

If you'll stop for a moment and have an honest discussion about the principles involved here, you'll come to either one of two conclusions. Either the Serb Republic's secession from Bosnia was unjustified because it was done without the consent of its parent entity - and therefore so was Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia. Or, both the RS and Bosnia were justified in exercising their basic right to self-determination. You can not hold one position in one case, and a different in position in the other. Well I suppose you can, but not if you're going to retain any intellectual honesty.

Various authors have stated that the Yugoslav Constitution did have a provision to allow for a republic's seccesion based on unanimous agreement amongst all the republic's. Perhaps its "abusrd length" and being "virtually untranslatable" (not to mention the fact that it has already been replaced, what two times?) is why no one has bothered to post the actual text of it online (at least not that I have been able to find). I have taken them at their word. Perhaps they were right, perhaps not, but it is really irrelevant at this point.

Condemn both if you like, or support both. But don't praise one and condemn the other, and still call yourself an honest man.

Bob,

Please don't presume to lecture me on intellectual honesty:

The SDS conducted, in November of 1991, a plebiscite which was restricted to their own membership, i.e., Bosnian Serbs, as to whether they wanted to stay as a part of Yugoslavia.

Based upon the results of this referendum, Karadzic et al declared that those areas wherein more than 50% of the vote was in favor of staying with Yugoslavia were now part of the Autonomous Serb Republic of Bosnia.

On the other hand, the Bosnian government conducted, in March of 1992, a referendum which was open to all, (the SDS boycotted, surprise surprise) which posed the question:

Are you for a sovereign and independent Bosnia and Hercegovina, a state of equal citizens, the peoples of Bosnia and Hercegovina -- Muslims, Serbs, Croats, and members of other nations -- living in it?

Results showed that of the ~3.15 million eligible voters in Bosnia (this includes the boycotting SDS membership) 63% supported independence. When you count only votes cast, 99.7% supported the referendum.

So on one hand, you have an exclusionary vote that the Bosnian Serbs "won", vs. a Republic wide, all inclusive vote which the Bosnian Serbs chose to boycott as they knew the JNA would be able to settle the forthcoming dispute in their favor.

You are attempting to compare apples and oranges, Bob, and that's not intellectually honest, is it.

THE REFERENDUM ON INDEPENDENCE IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
February 29-March 1, 1992

Your "apples and oranges" all taste like the same bitter grapefruit to me, Hoplite. If the RS's vote was "exclusionary" because it did not include the entire parent entity (all of Bosnia), then so was the Muslims' referendum on Bosnian independence because it did not include all of Yugoslavia.

You condemn the RS for not getting permission from the rest of Bosnia prior to secession, but are fine when Bosnia split from Yugoslavia without the latter's consent.

No, Hoplite, that is not very intellectually honest at all.

Considering that Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo have all opted out of Yugoslavia when given the chance to do so, your position that enlarging the voter base to include all of Yugoslavia would have changed the outcome of the Bosnian referendum is bizarre.

No wonder everything tastes bitter to you, Bob - the world operates under different principles than you do. When the RS seceded, it began to murder and expel non-Serbs in order to create an ethnically pure state - compare that to the language in the Bosnian referendum.

That you ignore that one salient feature of the RS damns more than just your sense of taste, Bob.

Yes, had Bosnia's independence referendum included all of the "rump" Yugoslavia at that time, I'm sure results would have been much different. Your statement to the contrary is what is bizarre.

But that is not the issue I'm debating. The issue I'm concerned with is your hypocricy. You just posted that the RS's secession was illegitimate because it did not consider all of Bosnia. Yet you continue to maintain that Bosnia's secession was legitmate, even though it did not ask all of Yugoslavia.

They can both be either (a)justified acts of self-determination or (b)wrong-headed nationalist warmongering, and I concede there is a strong case to be made for both sides. But to claim "a" for Bosnia but "b" for the RS, as you do, betrays your true agenda and undermines all your posts.

The RS's secession was illegitimate because it excluded from the decision making process actual inhabitants of the RS, namely non-Serbs.

So while you're Ok with ignoring the wishes of, say, the 59% of the district of Zvornik (1991) who were Muslim and sending in Arkan to change the demographics of that area to make it more amenable to little ethno-bigots such as yourself, I'm not.

And if you're going to insist on hewing to your "Pan Yugoslav" voting model, I'll shove the "Pan European" voting model back down your throat.

You know, the one that saw NATO bombing Serbs twice in the same decade because Milosevic was exporting non-Serb refugees to Europe and making your dream Europe's nightmare.

Got any other inane arguments to float my way?

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